Rock Runner

Rock runner is an action/exploration/puzzle game for the TI-99/4A home computer, inspired by the game Boulder Dash on other platforms. Collect diamonds in 2D worlds with stone, rocks, bombs, butterflies, monsters, and lava.

Features

• 15 challenging levels.
• Fast 4-directional scrolling.
• Introducing the colorful half-bitmap display mode.
• Sound and speech (with a speech synthesizer attached).
• Entirely written in TMS-9900 assembly code.
• The source code!

Screenshots

Requirements

• TI-99/4A home computer.
• 32K memory expansion.
• Editor/Assembler module (for the disk version).

or:

• An emulator for the TI-99/4A, such as Mame.

Building

You need to have the xdt99 cross-development tools installed, for the xas99 assembler.

On Linux, you can run the build script:

./build.sh

Alternatively, you can run its commands manually.

You'll then have the cartridge image out/RockRunner.rpk.

Running

The easiest way is to use the Mame emulator.

On Linux, you can run the script to launch Mame with the proper options:

./run.sh

Alternatively, you can run the Mame command manually.

Once Mame is running and showing the TI-99/4A launch screen:

1. Press any key.
2. Press 2 for "Rock Runner"

The game then starts. You can select a screen with the joystick and fire to start playing.

You can exit Mame by pressing Insert and then Esc.

History

I wrote Rock Runner around 1986, using a basic TI-99/4A, a Mini Memory module with 4K of battery-backed memory, a regular 32K memory expansion, and a cassette tape recorder for external storage. The line-by-line assembler could convert individual assembly instructions and write them straight to memory. The memory editor then still allowed to edit a program as hexadecimal values, manually changing opcodes and moving instructions and data around. Those were the days!

Decades later, Ralph Benzinger 's excellent xdt99 cross-development tools allowed me to disassemble the code. For the first time, I could see the source code of my own program in full -- and so can you now. With all-new documentation, the code is holding up pretty nicely. It can be a fun example of hand-written assembly code for the TI-99/4A.

Versions

You can check out the following git tags:

• master Version that creates an image of a Rock Runner cartridge.
• v1.0 Version that recreates an image of the original Rock Runner floppy disk.

License

Rock Runner is now released under the GNU General Public License, version 2.

Enjoy!

Eric Lafortune